Fanāʾ and Fasād: Perceptions and Concepts of Crises and Disasters in Fourteenth-Century Egypt

Büssow-Schmitz, Sarah

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-49163-9_4

Sarah Büssow-Schmitz⁷

Part of the book series: Transcultural Research – Heidelberg Studies on Asia and Europe in a Global Context ((TRANSCULT))

917 Accesses

Abstract

The Mamlūk Empire had to face many events and situations that one could describe as critical moments of destruction or even as disasters. How did contemporaries refer to such events and situations? Two key terms in this respect, fasād and fanāʾ, were both used frequently by Mamlūk chroniclers, though with different connotations. Based on the terms’ use for different events (in this case Bedouin attacks, the plague, and Timur’s conquest of Baghdad in 1393) it becomes clear that fasād was linked to social causes that could be fought, whereas fanāʾ suggests an act with extra-social roots and without any possibility of avoidance. These terms and concepts, then, could also play a role in political language.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Chapter: USD 29.95; Price excludes VAT (USA)

eBook: USD 119.00; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Softcover Book: USD 159.99; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

1.
Reinhart Koselleck, “Krise,” in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, ed. Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, and Reinhart Koselleck (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1982), 3: 617.
2.
Ibid., 617, 619.
3.
Ibid., 617.
4.
See for instance František Graus, Pest—Geissler—Judenmorde: Das 14. Jahrhundert als Krisenzeit (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1987), 7, 537; Ingrid Gilcher-Holtey, “‘Kritische Ereignisse’ und ‘kritischer Moment:’ Pierre Bourdieus Modell der Vermittlung von Ereignis und Struktur,” in “Struktur und Ereignis,” ed. Andreas Suter and Manfred Hettling, special issue, Geschichte und Gesellschaft 19 (2001): 122.
5.
For further information, see Gerrit Jasper Schenk, “Historical Disaster Research: State of Research, Concepts, Methods , and Case Studies,” Historische Sozialforschung 32, no. 3 (2007): 9–31; Enrico L. Quarantelli, ed., What is a Disaster ? Perspectives on the Question (London : Routledge, 1998).
6.
See for instance Muḥammad Ibn Mukarram Ibn Manẓūr, ‘Fasād,’ Lisān al-ʿarab (Beirut : Dār Ṣādir, 1994), 3: 335; Abū al-Fidāʾ Ismāʿīl Ibn ʿUmar Ibn Kath īr, Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿaẓīm (Beirut: Dār Iḥyāʾ al-Thurāt al-ʿArabī [ca. 1987]), 1: 79–80.
7.
See Arent Wensinck, Concordance et Indices de la Tradition Musulmane (Leiden: Brill, 1965), 5: 142–145.
8.
The physician Ibn al-Khaṭīb (1313–1374), for instance, uses the term fasād literally in his treatise on the plague , referring to the corruption of the air (according to the antique miasma theory), which he considered the cause of the plague . See M. J. Müller, “Ibnulkhatibs Bericht über die Pest,” Sitzungsberichte der königlich Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 2 (1863): 1–2, 19.
9.
Wensinck, Concordance, 144. See also Qurʾān 7:85: “[...] So fill up the measure and the balance, and diminish not the goods of the people; and do not corruption in the land, after it has been set right (lā tufsidū fī l-arḍ baʿda iṣlāḥihā). That is better for you, if you should be believers,” Qurʾān 26:151–152: “and obey not the commandment of the prodigal, who do corruption in the earth (al-ladhīna yufsidūna fī l-arḍ), and set not things aright (lā yuṣliḥūna).” The translations come from The Koran Interpreted, trans. Arthur John Arberry (London : Oxford University Press, 1964).
10.
Frederick Mathewson Denny, “Corruption,” in Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān, ed. Jane D. McAuliffe (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 1: 440. In his translation of the Qur’ān, Rudi Paret translates the word fasād as the rather general term “calamity.” Paret writes in his commentary that the term, as it is used in the Qurʾān, refers to a “calamity” that has social causes. He also assumes that fasād , as it is used in the Qurʾān, “probably means the disturbance of the social and political order […].” Rudi Paret, Der Koran: Kommentar und Konkordanz (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer 1977), 14. On this term see also Toshihiko Izutsu, Ethico Religious Concepts in the Qurʾān (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002), 211–213.
11.
The Koran Interpreted.
12.
Ibid.
13.
The process of good and capable rule, the prevention of corruption, and the attainment of obedience to the ruler is known as “restraint” (qahr). Paul L. Heck, “Law in ʿAbbasid Political Thought from Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ (d. 139/756) to Qudāma b. Jaʿfar (d. 337/948),” in ʿ Abbasid Studies : Occasional Papers of the School of ʿ Abbasid Studies ; Cambridge , 6 – 10 July 2002 , Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 135, ed. James E. Montgomery (Leuven: Peeters, 2004), 91.
14.
Taqī al-Dīn Aḥmad Ibn Alī al-Maqrīzī , Kitāb al-sulūk li-maʿrifat duwal al-mulūk, ed. Muḥammad Muṣṭafā Ziyāda, 4 vols. (Cairo: Dār al-Kutub, 2007).
15.
Maqrīzī, Sulūk, vol. 2, pt. 3, 772.
16.
Werner Caskel, Entdeckungen in Arabien (Cologne: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1954), 32.
17.
Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2^nd ed., s.v. “Ḥadd,” by Joseph Schacht, accessed August 04, 2016, http://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopaedia-of-islam-2/Hadd
18.
See, for instance, Maqrīzī, Sulūk, vol. 2, pt. 3, 907–908.
19.
Ibid., 770, 833.
20.
Ibid., 917.
21.
Ibid., 770.
22.
Ibid., 907.
23.
Maqrīzī saw, for instance, the government and its economic and monetary policy as the reason for the economic crisis at the beginning of the fourteenth century, two months after he was dismissed from the position of muḥtasib (market inspector). See Adel Allouche, Mamluk Economics: A Study and Translation of al-Maqrīzī’s Ighāthah (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1994), 13–16.
24.
Maqrīzī, Sulūk, vol. 3, pt. 1, 352.
25.
Maqrīzī, Sulūk, vol. 2, pt. 3, 798.
26.
Annemarie Schimmel, Mystische Dimensionen des Islam: Die Geschichte des Sufismus (Frankfurt a. M.: Insel Verlag, 1995), 207; Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2^nd ed., s.v. “Baḳāʾ wa-Fanāʾ,” by Fazlur Rahman, accessed August 04, 2016, http://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopaedia-of-islam-2/baka-wa-fana.
27.
See, for instance, al-Ḥasan Ibn ʿUmar Ibn Ḥabīb, Tadhkirat al-nabīya fī ayyām al-Manṣūr wa banīhi, ed. Muḥammad Amīn and Saʿīd Ashūr (Cairo: Dār al-Kutub, 1986), 3: 110–111; Muḥammad Ibn Aḥmad Ibn Iyas, Badāʾiʿ al-zuhūr fī waqāiʿ al-duhūr, ed. Muḥammad Muṣṭafā (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1972), 2:523.
28.
On the use of these two terms in Arabic sources, see Lawrence Conrad, “Ṭāʿūn and Wabāʾ: Conceptions of Plague and Pestilence in Early Islam,” Journal of The Economic and Social History of The Orient 25, no. 3 (1982): 268–307.
29.
Ibn Ḥabīb, Tadhkirat, 110.
30.
Graus, Pest, 23.
31.
Wensinck, Concordance, 200–201.
32.
Ibid., 201.
33.
In the Qurʾān, fanā ʾ (55:26) or, more precisely, its Arabic root, occurs only once, where it is said that human beings will all pass away in the end of their time , while only God is eternal. Here the term fanā ʾ is used in the sense of a natural process and without reference to a disaster such as the plague .
34.
Aḥmad Ibn Ḥanba l, cited in Wensinck, Concordance, 201.
35.
Derivatives of the root underlying the word fanā ʾ were also used in the context of cattle disease. See Maqrīzī, Sulūk, vol. 3, pt. 2, 769.
36.
This explanation entailed three basic ideas that were discussed by religious scholars, based on corresponding ḥadīths. Firstly, the plague is sent by God. It is a punishment for the unbeliever and martyrdom for the believing victims. Secondly, since God is the creator of all beings, and therefore also of the plague , the epidemic cannot be transferred from one human being to another. Hence the plague is not contagious. Thirdly, trying to escape from the disease is futile, because nobody can escape God’s will. See Michael Dols, The Black Death in the Middle East (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 109–121.
37.
Dols, Black Death, 84–109.
38.
Maqrīzī, Sulūk, vol. 2, pt. 3, 773. See his report on the Black Death in Sulūk, vol. 2, pt. 3, 759, 771, 772–791. There was a contemporary discussion concerning which explanation for the plague was true. Ibn Ḥabīb, for example, quoted from a plague treatise by Ibn al-Wardī (d. 1349), who wrote about this dispute and adopted the position of the religious scholars. Ibn Ḥabīb, Tadhkirat, 112. For Ibn al-Wardī see Michael Dols, “Ibn al-Wardī’s Risālah al-Nabaʾ ʿan al-Wabaʾ: A translation of a Major Source for the History of the Black Death in the Middle East’,” in Near Eastern Numismatics, Iconography, Epigraphy and History: Studies in Honor of George C. Miles, ed. Dickran K. Kouymjian (Beirut : American University of Beirut, 1974), 443–455.
39.
Maqrīzī, Sulūk, vol. 2, pt. 3, 781.
40.
Ibn Ḥabīb, Tadhkirat, 111.
41.
Ibid., 112. For qadar see Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2^nd ed., s.v. “al-Ḳaḍā wa ‘l-ḳadar,” by Louis Gardet, accessed August 04, 2016, http://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopaedia-of-islam-2/al-kada-wa-l-kadar.
42.
Yet Maqrīzī and other chroniclers also mentioned that the people attempted to evade the plague , e.g. by flight. However, most anecdotes dealing with flight describe it as unsuccessful. See for instance, Maqrīzī, Sulūk, vol. 2, pt. 3, 773–774; Ibn Iyas, Badāʾiʿ, 528.
43.
Maqrīzī, Sulūk, vol. 3, pt. 2, 790.
44.
See also Jean Aubin, “Comment Tamerlan prenait les villes,” Studia Islamica 19 (1963): 83–122.
45.
ʿAlī Ibn Dāwud al-Jawharī, Nuzhat al-nufūs wa al-abdān fī tawārīkh al-zamān, ed. Ḥasan Ḥabashī (Cairo: Dār al-Kutub, 1970), 1: 366.
46.
Tilmann Nagel, Timur der Eroberer und die islamische Welt des späten Mittelalters, (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1993), 16–20.
47.
Ibid., 29.
48.
Ibid., 28–29.
49.
Cited ibid., 22. Contemporaries and later scholars searched after the conquest for social causes that lay behind this disaster, and mainly found them in the weakness of the Caliphs’ rule. See ibid., 22–23.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Zwehrenbühlstr. 12, 72070, Tübingen, Germany
Sarah Büssow-Schmitz

Authors

Sarah Büssow-Schmitz
View author publications
You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sarah Büssow-Schmitz .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Fachgebiet Mittelalterliche Geschichte, Institut für Geschichte, Darmstadt, Germany
Gerrit Jasper Schenk

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Büssow-Schmitz, S. (2017). Fanāʾ and Fasād: Perceptions and Concepts of Crises and Disasters in Fourteenth-Century Egypt. In: Schenk, G. (eds) Historical Disaster Experiences. Transcultural Research – Heidelberg Studies on Asia and Europe in a Global Context. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49163-9_4

Download citation

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49163-9_4
Published: 21 March 2017
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-49162-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-49163-9
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics